Language:

Threatening public health, spreading disease and death

Click the image to the right to view the Count the Costs health briefing.

The global war on drugs has historically been promoted as a policy that protects public health, on the basis that it can restrict or eliminate drug availability and use. Research shows it has failed to achieve either of these aims, with global trends in drug use – particularly high-risk use – rising consistently over the past half-century and illegal drugs cheaper and more available than ever.

Worse, the policy has increased the risks associated with drug use, tilting the market towards ever more potent and risky products often cut with contaminants, and encouraging high-risk behaviours (such as injecting) in unsupervised and unhygienic environments. As a result, users suffer avoidable neonatal problems, overdoses and poisonings, and contract blood-borne diseases – such as HIV and hepatitis – that can spread to the general population, as well as devastate drug-using populations.

Populist drug war rhetoric has also tended to push scarce drug policy resources into counterproductive enforcement, at the expense of proven public health initiatives, including prevention and treatment. It has also created obstacles to pragmatic harm reduction measures for the most vulnerable high-risk users.

Outside of Sub-Saharan Africa, injection drug use accounts for approximately one in three new cases of HIV. In Russia, where injecting drug users now number over 1.8 million, 37% are HIV-positive(1)

In China, figures from 2006 showed that 48% of HIV cases were people who inject drugs,(2) but only 15% of those on antiretroviral drugs were people who inject drugs(3)

Despite official guidance, in the UK active injectors are often refused treatment for the hepatitis C virus

"One of the priorities is to stop wasting resources on the failed 'War on Drugs' that has turned into a war against people and communities. This war must end. Resources should instead be devoted to providing, to everyone who needs them, evidence-based and human rights-based interventions that prevent problematic drug use, treat drug dependence and ensure harm reduction services for people who use drugs."

In a candid report, the then head of the UN agency responsible for overseeing the international conventions on drugs describes the multilateral drug control system as not 'fit for purpose'. He also explains how the international regime has created significant unintended consequences.

This report examines the barriers that Central and Eastern European injecting drug users face in accessing antiretroviral treatment, as well as highlighting some of the ways that non-governmental organizations and governments have found to overcome these obstacles.

This report, based on a comprehensive survey of organizations working with sex workers throughout CEE/CA, offers proof that the problems of sex work, drug use, and HIV are becoming increasingly intertwined.

An article by the Environmental Health Perspectives that investigates the potential risks that the herbicide Roundup has on human pregnancy and reproduction. The article finds that the Roundup mixture used to eradicate crops in Colombia is toxic to human placental cells and could lead to reproductive issues.

World Health Organization reports the overrepresentation of drug users in prisons in Europe. It defines harm reduction, looks at the various approaches to reducing harm, such as preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, and considers the evidence for harm reduction approaches to be used in prisons.

A 2004 report from the Beckley Foundation which finds that the punitive approach to drugs employed in Russia and Ukraine has not succeeded in significantly reducing levels of use. It has nstead pushed the drug scene underground and increased risky behaviours among vulnerable groups.

As the US continues to fumigate Colombia with herbicides that damage not only the environment, but people's livelihood and health, the People's Defender's office have called for a stop to the spraying in Putumayo. However the pleas are ignored and the BBC News report on the damage that is occurring as a result of the fumigation.